On September 16, at a press conference on "High-Quality Completion of the 14th Five-Year Plan" held by the State Council Information Office, relevant officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced that since the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China has prioritized agricultural technology innovation and increased policy support. Currently, China's overall level of agricultural technology innovation has entered the world's first tier. With the support of technological innovation, agriculture's high-quality development confidence has grown stronger, ensuring that the rice bowls of 1.4 billion Chinese people are held more securely.
A strong country must first have strong agriculture; only when agriculture is strong can the country be strong. Over the past five years, China has cumulatively built more than 1 billion acres of high-standard farmland. By the end of 2024, the contribution rate of agricultural technology progress reached 63.2%, the comprehensive mechanization rate of crop cultivation and harvesting exceeded 75%, and the coverage rate of improved crop varieties surpassed 96%. These substantial technological breakthroughs have provided solid confidence and continuous momentum for high-quality agricultural development, while also laying a foundation for innovative breakthroughs across various sectors.
The enhanced effectiveness of the innovation system serves as a solid foundation for China's high-quality agricultural development. China has established a relatively complete agricultural technology innovation system from central to local levels, with more than 800 agricultural research institutes and universities and over 120,000 researchers. A complete and effective agricultural technology innovation system can focus research directions more precisely on agriculture's "pain points," "difficulties," and "bottlenecks," ensuring that scientific research capabilities accurately meet the practical needs of agricultural production. It also facilitates resource integration and creates a solid foundation for the rapid implementation of new agricultural technologies from research to application.
Accelerated breakthroughs in core technologies provide strong momentum for China's high-quality agricultural development. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's agriculture has overcome a series of fundamental technologies, cultivated major varieties urgently needed for production, and developed advanced and applicable agricultural machinery. The transformation from "relying on foreign technology" to "independent research and development" and then to "gradually increasing market share" not only signifies effective integration between agricultural technology and new quality productive forces but also represents freedom from external dependencies, truly enabling adaptation to local conditions and circumstances across China's different regions and industries.
Deep integration of industry, academia, and research serves as an important link for China's high-quality agricultural development. Currently, among ongoing national agricultural technology projects, participating enterprises exceed 1,000, accounting for 51% of all participating institutions—more than half. This data indicates that enterprises have become important players in agricultural technology innovation, serving as a "transmission belt" connecting research institutes and farmlands. With enterprise assistance, research teams can quickly understand practical problems and conduct timely optimization and targeted research; enterprises can also leverage research teams' knowledge reserves and scientific advantages to overcome their own bottlenecks, providing crucial support for farmers and research teams in technology implementation and application transformation. The three-way interaction and complementarity of scientific research results, enterprise transformation, and industrial demand creates a "closed-loop linkage" in agricultural technology innovation, providing more efficient guarantees for result implementation.
Looking ahead, agricultural technology possesses broad development prospects while also facing numerous challenges from a new round of upgrades and transformations. From laboratory to farmland, from planting to harvesting, the pace of agricultural technology innovation and practice never ceases. Only by continuously improving collaborative innovation efficiency, persistently optimizing agricultural production conditions, and improving supporting reform guarantee systems can China occupy a proactive position in the new round of global agricultural technology competition, leading Chinese agriculture from "increased production" to higher levels of "quality improvement" and "transformation."
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